Your Comments: 'It's called public transportation for a reason'

View full sizeDick Blume / The Post StandardThis picture from July 7 shows one of the new Centro buses with a $12 million federal stimulus grant.

Centro is planning to combine or eliminate several bus routes north and west of Syracuse because of declining state aid and revenue, officials said. The bus company is proposing to consolidate four Auburn-Syracuse routes into two routes, eliminate a run between Fairmount/West Genesee and Syracuse and combine two routes that run between Cicero/North Syracuse and Syracuse, officials said.

Users of syracuse.com were quick to join the conversation, with many people saying that public money shouldn't be used to prop up Centro or any transit system. That let user bornintheUSA1 to argue the point by saying, in part:

"It is called PUBLIC transportation for a reason. The public helps pay for it. If bus service were a profit-making business, there would be private companies duplicating the services. No public transportation is self-sustaining financially. These bus services are always supplemented with tax dollars in EVERY community.

"What you have ignored is what these changes are doing to the poor working class men and women who relied on this bus service to get to work. They are eliminating service altogether for communities that have no other bus service. What are folks who live in Throop and Port Byron supposed to do to get to work and to the doctor appointments and VA Hospital Services that they could only access on the bus? It is not like there is any other bus service to Auburn or Weedsport for those people to try to catch the new consolidated service. You are talking about leaving up to 100 people with no tranportation.